Dear All,
Many of us have been fortunate to have witnessed
strong women leaders in our lifetime. Former Prime Minister [Iron Lady] MargretThatcher of England, and former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir both made
huge contributions to their countries and to the history of their time.
Today, we are fortunate to witness another such
leader in Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel as she takes the lead in
challenging Russia’s Dictator Vladimir Putin over his attempts to forcefully
annex the eastern portion of the Ukraine; and after he already used militarily
force to annex the Crimea portion of that country.
After reading this article, I think you will find
Chancellor Merkel to be a pretty gutsy lady and the right person for our time;
especially since America’s President Obama continues to be missing in action
(MIA).You might also want to recall how Obama obnoxiously chastised presidential candidate Mitt Romney, when their debate came to foreign policy and the Country of Ukraine when Romney remarked that Russia’s intentions in the Ukraine were certainly a concern of his where upon Obama went in to a critical tirade against his opponent.
Well, like just about everything else we are seeing today, Obama has been dangerously wrong in his feckless and bizarre world viewpoints and now we are seeing that his weak grasp of foreign policy combined with his bankrupt leadership has unleashed tragic and unintended consequences on the lives of those who live in other countries; while making our world a much more dangerous place to live.
Thank goodness for a leader like Chancellor Merkel to help fill the vacuum left by President Obama.
Ron Kirkish
Merkel Issues Rebuke to
Russia, Setting Caution Aside
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/europe/russia-deports-german-polish-diplomats-retaliation.html?_r=0
By ALISON SMALENOV. 17, 2014
LONDON — Tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.
Russian naval ships showing up as world leaders meet in Australia. Chancellor Angela
Merkel of Germany telling Russia sternly to play by 21st-century rules — and
President Vladimir V. Putin practically spitting fury over Western reaction to
his annexation of Crimea.
As relations between Russia and the West
increasingly resemble the bygone days of the Cold War, Ms. Merkel abandoned her
traditionally cautious tone on Monday, castigating Russia for its actions in Ukraine,
for intimidating sovereign states in Eastern Europe and for threatening to
spread conflict more broadly across Europe.
“The Ukraine crisis is most likely not just a
regional problem,” Ms. Merkel said in a speech at the Lowy Institute for
International Policy in Sydney, Australia. “In this case, we see it affects us
all.”
“Who would’ve thought,” she said, “that 25 years
after the fall of the wall, after the end of the Cold War, after the end of the
division of Europe and the end of the world being divided in two, something
like that can happen right at heart of Europe?”
Ms. Merkel’s speech followed a meeting of the Group
of 20 leaders in Brisbane, Australia, where the souring relations were on full
display as Western leaders pressed Mr. Putin on Russia’s Crimea policy and
support for Ukrainian separatists — and the Russian leader slipped out early,
insisting he had business to attend to back home.
President Obama said his meeting with Russia’s
leader at the summit meeting was “businesslike and blunt.” Prime Minister David
Cameron of Britain, who in the days leading up to Brisbane had likened Mr.
Putin’s actions to those of Nazi Germany, told the Russian president that he
was at a fork in the road over Ukraine. Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada
told Mr. Putin, “Well, I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing
to say to you: ‘You need to get out of Ukraine.’ ”
As the meeting wound up, Russia expelled multiple
diplomats after Germany, Poland and Lithuania apparently took similar actions
against Russian envoys accused of spying. Sweden, which for days recently was
transfixed by the appearance off its coast of what appeared to be a Russian
submarine, has also said Russia increased its spying this year.
But the real surprise was the tone taken
by Ms. Merkel in her speech after the summit meeting. In recent weeks, the
chancellor has made it clear she sees that “Putin is testing us,”
as she told parliamentary deputies.
In a discussion at the university, she developed that
thought further, asking whether Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea and military
and political interference in eastern Ukraine meant a return to the times
when Moscow decided the fate of its near neighbors.
Ms. Merkel seemed to acknowledge that the West should
consider Russian sensitivities to Ukraine — with long, close ties to Russia —
joining NATO.
But she said that was not the case with Ukraine
drawing closer to the European Union, which sparked the long-running unrest and
conflict with Russia.
In such a case, “it cannot be that you forbid a
country to act, or that it cannot itself decide freely,” she said. “Otherwise,
we have to say: ‘We’re so weak, pay attention, people, we can’t take any more
members — we’ll just ask in Moscow whether it’s possible.’ That was how it was
for 40 years, or longer, and I really was not wanting to go back there.”
“And it is not just a case of Ukraine,” Ms. Merkel
continued. “It concerns Moldova, it concerns Georgia.
If things go on like this, one can ask: Should we
ask about Serbia? Should we ask about the western Balkans? That is
certainly incompatible with our values.”
In an interview that was broadcast on Germany’s most
watched television talk show Sunday evening, Mr. Putin was equally stinging.
Interviewed by a German journalist who has long had
good access to the Russian leader, he pursed his lips and angrily clipped his
words as he said the West had “reacted absolutely inappropriately” over
Ukraine.
Striking a now familiar line of defense, Mr. Putin
cited international law as applied to the independence of ethnic Albanians in
Kosovo from Serbia, and declared his actions as more democratic.
Kosovo’s independence came only through a
parliamentary vote, he said, whereas in Crimea the population voted in March to
join Russia — which by then had already secured control through deployment of
its elite troops in unmarked uniforms.
In an interview late last week in Kiev, Ukraine’s
prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, urged Western countries to keep up
pressure on Russia, warning that any other approach would only invite further
aggression from President Putin.
“He is testing the ground,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said. “He
will move as far as the world will allow him.”
Reports last week by NATO that Russia had recently
poured tanks and military vehicles across its border into eastern Ukraine, Mr.
Yatsenyuk said, suggested that Moscow intended to enlarge territory controlled
by separatist rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions that have declared
themselves independent states, and establish a land corridor to Crimea, which
Russia annexed in March. So far, he added, there has been no sharp increase in
fighting.
“Let me put it bluntly: This is a war,” Mr.
Yatsenyuk said. “The well-known diplomatic language of red line is sometimes
embarrassing to me because it seems as if we are geopolitically colorblind.
Russia has crossed tens of red lines.”
Still, the Russian-German exchange is unlikely to
stop Ms. Merkel from pursuing what she reiterated is the West’s course: to
condemn Russia’s violations of international law, to pursue diplomacy if
possible, but to punish with sanctions. Accordingly, on Monday, European Union
foreign ministers decided to impose more sanctions on separatists in Ukraine,
but also to pursue diplomacy. Ms. Merkel’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, travels to Kiev and Moscow on Tuesday.
But the fourth element in Ms. Merkel’s description
of Western reaction to Ukraine was crucial: to refrain from military action
against Russia, which, she noted, would almost certainly not be limited to the
region. That perhaps is the strongest Cold War echo of all — the idea that a
confrontation in one area would lead to a much bigger conflict.
Germans have been reflecting on this all this
extraordinary year — which contains the momentous anniversaries of World Wars I
and II, as well as of the Cold War’s ending, and shows how conflicts can flare
out of control.
“And suddenly we are confronted with a conflict
which goes to the center of our values, so to speak,” Ms. Merkel said. “Now we
can’t hold speeches at commemorations. Now we have to show what we have learned
from all this.”
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NATO Reports Increased Russian Troop
Movement
More than two months into a shaky cease-fire, NATO
reported significant new Russian troop movements into Ukraine. NATO’s top
military commander said that convoys of tanks, artillery and combat troops were
streaming over the border, in what appeared to be preparations for renewed
military action.
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